Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Missy Chimpanzee

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Age: 41ish. Her birthday is unknown, but it’s estimated she was born in 1975. We celebrate her birthday on September 23 each year.

Nicknames: Miss, Miss-Miss, Little Bigfoot (we often joke that she resembles Bigfoot when she stands bipedally on Young’s Hill)

Best friend: Annie
Favorite foods: Tomatoes!

Distinguishing physical characteristics: distinctive white patch above her upper lip on the left side of her face, somewhat square body with no neck (she does have a neck, it’s just short).

Favorite things to do: Running, jumping, sprinting, climbing and other various acrobatic feats (including, but not limited to, firehose walking, leaping and balancing), building big nests and playing with Annie. She is also pretty serious about grooming sessions, including grooming herself with a tool.

Personality: active, energetic, graceful, adventurous, good sense of humor

Other: First to offer support/back up to the other chimps and she almost didn’t make it to sanctuary.

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You can find out more about Missy’s story before coming to CSNW here.

Burrito’s invisibility cloak

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Burrito is known for his ridiculously adorable shenanigans. And today was no different. (There are some blurry action shots that I just couldn’t leave out).

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Despite the blur of Burrito, I love his huge play face you can just make out under the veil. At this point, he jumped down to begin a raucous game of tug o’ war with the scarf. This guy.

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Boat Bumper Ball Antics

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One of the first nearly chimp-proof enrichment items the chimpanzees had after arriving to the sanctuary was a “boat bumper” donated by long-time supporter Kathy Benson, who found it at a garage sale.

Below is a photo of Annie (yawning) holding the toy. This was taken in July of 2008, less than a month after the chimpanzees arrived.

Annie with boat bumper

 

Recently, I searched on amazon for the same thing, remembering how much fun it had been for the chimps all those years ago. It turns out the big ones are fairly expensive, and I didn’t know if it would last as long, so I opted to get a small version and see how things went…

 

I do like how portable this version is –

MIssy carrying boat bumper

but given Jamie and Missy’s keen interest in “opening” the ball, I’m not sure how long it will last. What do you think?

Top Videos of 2015!?

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The other day, I was looking back on the year and watched a few of our videos from 2015. I had this idea to compile some of my favorites and/or some of the most popular videos from the year in a blog post.

This turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. I really love all of the videos for different reasons, so the narrowing down process was not easy.

But, here goes…

Epic tug o’ war session between Foxie and Jamie:

 

Burrito and his stuffed gorilla friend:

 

The new structure completed in the spring:

 

Burrito playing with staff caregiver Keri:

 

This one of Negra simply because she is was so happy on her birthday:

 

Foxie being oh so very Foxie:

 

This one due to the pumpkin thieving incident:

 

I really think that this one is near the top of the list, even though J.B. put it together just a week ago for Christmas:

 

OMG – this one, especially beginning at the 2:01 mark:

 

Okay – I really could just to on and on. The positive reinforcement training videos are also great, and the video of the process we go through when Jamie wants to take a walk around the hill. And so many videos of the chimpanzees enjoying food. And several videos of Missy and Annie playing. And…

 

Did I miss your favorite? Let me know – I’m curious to hear from the chimps’ fans. You can go to our You Tube channel and take a look at 7+ years of video!